tl;dr

I fixed the ending.

raygundan: Gdalescrboz: I multi-task extremely well(can't stay on a single task though).

Doesn't ADHD usually come with a tendency to <a href="http://www.additudemag.com/adhd/article/612.html">hyperfocus</ a>?  Although not necessarily on what your real priority is.  It's not, as so many people seem to think, a lack of attention.  It's a lack of ability to control the focus of your attention.

I am employed as the senior computer support staff in a department at a university. My ability to hyperfocus has enabled me to dedicate multiple hours -- even days -- of work upon tasks intended to streamline system and software deployment. Through hours of effort, I have been able to save literally minutes of time.

FizixJunkee: All this is true. I was diagnosed when I was about 33 years old. Adderall has been a godsend for me.

I'm glad I'm not the only one. To hear me talk about it, I sound like a shill for Adderall. :P

I feel like the Amish Laughing Guy, going "Ha! Ha! I can work!"

Let me tell you about my databases... :P

fredklein: FatherChaos:
I've never seen that Calvin and Hobbes.  That's seriously depressing.

Here's the antidote:

[i93.photobucket.com image 768x260]




/more salve

Was that headline written by George Bluth?

/dnrtfa

Adult ADHD is a real thing (although perhaps overdiagnosed) and can have seriously bad consequences. The good news is that it's controllable by medication. I should know.

But let's be clear: don't be fooled by the sudden frenzy of adult ADHD diagnoses. It's a real thing, and it can have really bad consequences. Fortunately, there are excellent meds for it, as I know from personal experience.

All that having been said, it's important to recognize that adult ADHD is not a media sensation: it's a real thing, although sometimes overdiagnosed, and it can have serious implications for your life. Thank goodness it can be controlled pharmaceutically. (Just ask my pharmacist!)

tl;dr: adult ADHD is real, bad, and controllaHEY LET'S GO RIDE BIKES

RexTalionis: Gifted Many Few: Happy Hours: You sound ADHD. (not really, but you see how it works now?)

I've been told I have Aspergers. Not from a doctor, but from people that hear how I talk. I am the guy that will complain about my food not being done right in a restaurant or telling the mailman to wipe his feet before walking on my porch. I don't have a social condition, I just tell people how it is.

I feel ADHD is the same thing. Someone isn't doing well, we have to have a medical reason, so they can't be persecuted.

You're making a blanket determination of the validity of a condition based on a few comments a few non-medically trained lay people made to you in describing your behavior.

Do you understand how stupid and illogical that is?

I'll tell you how it is - you're an ignoramus and a cretin.

Do not be so quick to judge. I would like Gifted Many Few to apply his obvious medical expertise to diagnose the cause of a recurring pain that I have occasionally experienced in my knee. Perhaps he will inform me that the sensation is entirely psychosomatic.

theMightyRegeya: Fecacacophany: Thunderpipes: Made up diseases continue to grow in number, news at 11:00.

Good smacking now and then cures that early. ADHD is a term for laziness and lack of discipline, enabled by poor parenting. South Park had that right.

And if you smack your nearsighted kid hard enough he'll see the errors of his lazy-looking ways and see right.  Screw the glasses/contacts industry agenda.

You know, I really don't understand people.  Fark tends to be full of people who make fun of people who worship magical sky wizards, yet seem to fail to understand that the brain is an organ, just like any other, and things can go wrong with it, just like any other organ.

I've spent my life avoiding taking more drugs, because when I was a teenager I had to go on antiseizure medication that really  didturn me into a zombie.  Well, hell, the condition made me a zombie, too.  But I've spent much of my 38 years living in a fog.  fark anyone who thinks it's made up, imaginary, or an excuse.  It's a disorder.  You wouldn't tell a person with cancer that they just need to straighten up and grow cells the right way, would you?

Unfortunately, they would.  They believe that it isn't real if they can't see it... unless it's the magical skywizard who made the moon.  Oh, he's real and cares what we eat on some Fridays.

orclover: Over the last decade we were told by our oldest son's psychiatrist that the big change was coming when he hit puberty and that he might stablize or normal out alot.  Well at 14-15 he did change, big....he's practically non-functional now.  What little hope that we clinged to as he grew up that he might ever be able to take care of himself or live in at least a semi-assisted facility, well that hope is out the farking window.  Now the question is will he even be manageable enough to live in a full assisted living facility.  He's 15, if he gets any worse we will actually have to put a diaper on him.

October at least he gets his primary diagnosis when he turns 16.  No more ADHD with behavioral disorder, now were on to full blown schizophrenia.   Just ADHD would be a blessing.  Course at this point just about anything would be.

Don't worry, Thunderpipes' professors at the Medical School of Life tell him that your son is just being lazy.  Tell him to snap out of it.  He'll be fine.

Really.  I had no idea that my ADHD which carried over into my adulthood, carried over into my adulthood.  Why doesn't anyone tell me these    Hey cookies and milk. I'm hungry

notyomama: Gifted Many Few: I still think ADHD is a myth perpetuated by a few to have a new "victim class"
A bunch of people, normally middle class whites, need to find a new reason for society to pay attention to them. It's like the middle child syndrome.

Thunderpipes: Made up diseases continue to grow in number, news at 11:00.
Good smacking now and then cures that early. ADHD is a term for laziness and lack of discipline, enabled by poor parenting. South Park had that right.

I knew the "ADHD doesn't exist" derp would be strong in this thread.  Thanks for proving me right.  Please continue parading your stupidity for all of us to see.

To provide fair consideration: few discussions of evolution have been featured on Fark lately, thus science deniers have had little outlet for presenting their uninformed beliefs as established fact.

Brittabot: Well, yeah. And sometimes you struggle with ADD your entire goddamn life while being misdiagnosed with a host of other disorders that are all just symptoms of your long untreated ADD, then are told as an adult that you can't possibly have ADD because you were never diagnosed as a child...

I finally got my ADD diagnosis at 33, and I have to say, the symptoms are INFINITELY more impairing as an adult than they were when I was a kid.

Sounds like my experience; I was struggling with focus in my final year of my history degree, and finally sought out a psychiatrist's opinion.  Diagnosis was ADHD, at age 26.  Not sudden onset; one of the things we reviewed was my scholastic history, and looking back, every one of my report cards going back to Kindergarten had "can't sit still" or "trouble paying attention" somewhere on it.  The signs were all there, but my dad had a government job and we moved cities every few years, and no teachers made the connection.

Thankfully, caffeine works for me, but I need to regulate it; I need about 100mg every 3-4 hours.  Too much, and I just go out the far side and get hyper and twitchy.  

FLMountainMan: Not making a great argument here for hiring people with ADHD.  I don't give a shiat if you can't "summon the willpower" to not surf Fark at work.

This is like trying to describe addiction to someone who's never been addicted.  It's not about not giving a shiat.  It's about loving the work you do, and really wanting to get on that fascinating project that needs to get done by tomorrow, and here it is, 10pm, and you've been playing Minesweeper for three hours.  Minesweeper farking sucks.  You know it sucks.  Your project is much more fun.  Hell, any of a dozen other games you've got on your PC would be more fun.  Watching TV would be more fun.  You've been trying to force yourself to do something else, but you keep getting distracted by finding another bomb.

Trying to tell an ADHD person to "just focus" is like telling an alcoholic to "just stop drinking", or someone suffering clinical depression to "just suck it up and be happy".  It only makes sense if you have no idea what they're going through.  ADHD involves chemical imbalances in the brain.  It's not that we  won't focus.  It's that we  can't focus.  Or, to be even more clear, that we can't  controlfocus.  We can't focus on what we want to, and sometimes our focus gets "stuck" on something we DON'T want it to.

FatherChaos:
I've never seen that Calvin and Hobbes.  That's seriously depressing.

Here's the antidote:

Gary Coleman's kidneys: Really?? seriously, if that's a good description, that describes me to a T....as with with cleaning in general...I see it, I know I have to do it but I find it almost impossible until its to a point that its embarrassing.....please tell me there's a farking pill for this...it drives me crazy and has ruined relationships in the past...I would love to not be like this.



It's called "dontbelazyium". I've been taking it with moderate success.

Thunderpipes: Made up diseases continue to grow in number, news at 11:00.

Good smacking now and then cures that early. ADHD is a term for laziness and lack of discipline, enabled by poor parenting. South Park had that right.

And if you smack your nearsighted kid hard enough he'll see the errors of his lazy-looking ways and see right.  Screw the glasses/contacts industry agenda.

Thunderpipes: Made up diseases continue to grow in number, news at 11:00.

Good smacking now and then cures that early. ADHD is a term for laziness and lack of discipline, enabled by poor parenting. South Park had that right.

From which medical school did you earn your Psychology degree?

Gdalescrboz: Have ha ADHD my entire life, don't take meds, never will. I dont want to be medicated my whole life, only to decide one day im done being medicated and cant come off it because i dont know how to lice wirh it. If you live with it you learn to manage it, just like any "disorder." In my case, and I'm sure many others, I've made it my strength, among other thing I multi-task extremely well(can't stay on a single task though).

By denying Big Pharma of its cut of sweet sweet cash, you are truly history's greatest monster.

Have ha ADHD my entire life, don't take meds, never will. I dont want to be medicated my whole life, only to decide one day im done being medicated and cant come off it because i dont know how to lice wirh it. If you live with it you learn to manage it, just like any "disorder." In my case, and I'm sure many others, I've made it my strength, among other thing I multi-task extremely well(can't stay on a single task though).

Wait, so psychiatric problems don't just disappear the day we turn 18?  Or is it 21? 25? or 17 in Nevada and parts of Montana.